It all sounded so much easier back at the road house. There I was, spending my last couple bucks on some rotgut and the first solid food I’d eaten in a week when some poindexter walks up to me, drops a bag of cash down in front of me and asks me to help him get down to Milwaukee to look for some techno-gizmo. Being the kind and generous fellow that I am, I snatched up the moolah and helped him hop the next caravan towards the city. How was I supposed to know that the next day we’d end up having to steal a goddamn horse to go scavving for weapons for some other jerkass?
Sure enough, we weren’t the only folks on the trail of these choppers. On the cracked-up road to the market, I noticed that there was some smoke up ahead on the side of the road. I had a tough choice to make, I could split and leave the barfly and nerds to fend for themselves or I could stick around and make sure they didn’t die until after I managed to get my hands on some goodies to filch and then hock-off later. Of course, before I had a say in the matter, I was volunteered to do some snooping. Naturally, I wasn't too enthused, but being the only one of us who was used to skulking around I didn't mind too much at first.
Taking cover in the deep-purple shade of the buildings, I started to make my way over to the smoke. I did everything by the book. The sun was setting, so I kept my back towards the west to keep from getting blinded. I walked slowly, making sure to put my heel down smoothly to keep from making noise. I pulled my scarf up over my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing, just in case they had dogs with ‘em. I grabbed my pipe hard with my right hand and kept it up over my head, just in case I had to turn some unfortunate son’s face into paint. Sure enough, things were going pretty smoothly and I got a couple dozen yards from the camp. It was exactly what I was hoping I wasn’t going to see.
There were at least four meat-headed bandits, the kind who spent their days breaking into people’s houses, taking their valuables, ravishing the women and eating all their babies. We didn’t want bupkis to do with these fine young gentlemen. I turned on my heels and was getting ready to head back to the cart when I saw a rat. Not the small kind that’s good for eating, nope, this was a big one, the kind that’d take a bite out of you instead. It jumped at me and I did what any red-blooded human being would in a situation with this, I bashed it with my pipe until it was a dark red smear on the ground, swearing all the while.
Sure enough, I realized that I’d made a pretty bad move doing that when one of the mouth-breathers shouted out something. Course, I was already booking it back towards the cart at full-tilt so I didn’t actually make it out, not that I really had to strain to imagine what it could be. The buildings blurred together as I did what my legs did best, which made it pretty damn hard for me to remember the way back to the cart. There was plenty of shouting and the tell-tale swooshes of pneumo-rifles as the pellets cracked a window right past my shoulder.
I thought these guys would’ve lost track of me through the sheer fact that most folks these days don’t do their cardio, but it seemed like these guys had been eating their veggies. I ducked into an abandoned building and hoped to high heaven that it didn’t dead end on me. Thankfully, it was a wide-open fashion store filled with nothing much but big piles of moldy clothes, which was also pretty bad seeing as how I needed some place to hide. I jammed my pipe in between the door-handle to help hold it closed while I looked around for anything that I could crawl into until these knuckle-draggers got bored and left to go beat rocks into the ground or something. I didn’t have much time to come up with any ideas before the door behind me started to rock like the backseat of a station wagon on prom night. That’s what it came to me, I took a moldy chair and gave it a nice toss towards a nearby window, smashing it wide open and giving me the perfect opportunity to enact my plan. The thugs knocked the door in, saw the broken window and jumped through it to take off after me. When they’d all left, I climbed out of the pile of dirty clothes in the corner.
I walked back to the cart and told everybody exactly what had happened. Their only reaction was to get to that store as fast as they could before those bandits wised up and got there too. It was at that exact moment that I realized that if it weren’t for me, these guys were all going to end up dying and probably quite painfully too.
Sure enough, we weren’t the only folks on the trail of these choppers. On the cracked-up road to the market, I noticed that there was some smoke up ahead on the side of the road. I had a tough choice to make, I could split and leave the barfly and nerds to fend for themselves or I could stick around and make sure they didn’t die until after I managed to get my hands on some goodies to filch and then hock-off later. Of course, before I had a say in the matter, I was volunteered to do some snooping. Naturally, I wasn't too enthused, but being the only one of us who was used to skulking around I didn't mind too much at first.
Taking cover in the deep-purple shade of the buildings, I started to make my way over to the smoke. I did everything by the book. The sun was setting, so I kept my back towards the west to keep from getting blinded. I walked slowly, making sure to put my heel down smoothly to keep from making noise. I pulled my scarf up over my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing, just in case they had dogs with ‘em. I grabbed my pipe hard with my right hand and kept it up over my head, just in case I had to turn some unfortunate son’s face into paint. Sure enough, things were going pretty smoothly and I got a couple dozen yards from the camp. It was exactly what I was hoping I wasn’t going to see.
There were at least four meat-headed bandits, the kind who spent their days breaking into people’s houses, taking their valuables, ravishing the women and eating all their babies. We didn’t want bupkis to do with these fine young gentlemen. I turned on my heels and was getting ready to head back to the cart when I saw a rat. Not the small kind that’s good for eating, nope, this was a big one, the kind that’d take a bite out of you instead. It jumped at me and I did what any red-blooded human being would in a situation with this, I bashed it with my pipe until it was a dark red smear on the ground, swearing all the while.
Sure enough, I realized that I’d made a pretty bad move doing that when one of the mouth-breathers shouted out something. Course, I was already booking it back towards the cart at full-tilt so I didn’t actually make it out, not that I really had to strain to imagine what it could be. The buildings blurred together as I did what my legs did best, which made it pretty damn hard for me to remember the way back to the cart. There was plenty of shouting and the tell-tale swooshes of pneumo-rifles as the pellets cracked a window right past my shoulder.
I thought these guys would’ve lost track of me through the sheer fact that most folks these days don’t do their cardio, but it seemed like these guys had been eating their veggies. I ducked into an abandoned building and hoped to high heaven that it didn’t dead end on me. Thankfully, it was a wide-open fashion store filled with nothing much but big piles of moldy clothes, which was also pretty bad seeing as how I needed some place to hide. I jammed my pipe in between the door-handle to help hold it closed while I looked around for anything that I could crawl into until these knuckle-draggers got bored and left to go beat rocks into the ground or something. I didn’t have much time to come up with any ideas before the door behind me started to rock like the backseat of a station wagon on prom night. That’s what it came to me, I took a moldy chair and gave it a nice toss towards a nearby window, smashing it wide open and giving me the perfect opportunity to enact my plan. The thugs knocked the door in, saw the broken window and jumped through it to take off after me. When they’d all left, I climbed out of the pile of dirty clothes in the corner.
I walked back to the cart and told everybody exactly what had happened. Their only reaction was to get to that store as fast as they could before those bandits wised up and got there too. It was at that exact moment that I realized that if it weren’t for me, these guys were all going to end up dying and probably quite painfully too.